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Alternatives at WSF 2016: Global Justice Today

Date:

Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - 00:00 - Sunday, August 14, 2016 - 17:00

At the World Social Forum 2016 taking place in Montreal, Alternatives will present either on its own or jointly with other organizations a series of conferences, workshops and roundtables featuring speakers from Quebec, Canada, the USA, Central and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. The common thread running through these multiple activities is the need to update the Global Justice movement so it can respond to the challenges of capitalism’s present global crisis. More than ever, another world is possible and necessary.

While co-organizing a space called « Change the System, Not the Climate » comprised of an international conference held on the evening of August 11th featuring well-known author and activist Naomi Klein as keynote speaker, Alternatives will also take part in the following events during WSF 2016: World Forum of Free Media, the World Parliamentarians Forum, the Environment Space, the Extractivism Space, the Emancipation Space and the Peoples University of Nouveaux cahiers du socialisme (NCS).

We will also take part in several "convergence assemblies" designed to facilitate common actions and campaigns by social movements.

The « Change the System, Not the Climate » Space

« Change the System, Not the Climate » has become the common slogan uniting climate justice movements across the world. With few words it communicates the essence of the message: neoliberal capitalism is poisoning the earth and all beings that live from it. To solve the ecological crisis we must go to the root cause of the problem: a profoundly unjust and destructive system geared to unending accumulation and extraction of maximum profit.

During the past few years and especially since COP 21 in Paris, the concept of « Just Transition « has been added to the common understanding of this slogan. By Just Transition we understand the absolute need to transition out of a productive system based on fossil fuels by banking on profound social transformations carried out by popular movements.

This space, jointly organized by Alternatives and the New York office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, is designed as a space for social movements and activists to reflect on common strategies and actions needed to confront the systemic crisis we are living through.